


Sic the Dogs

by kayliemalinza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Abuse, BDSM, Dean is a Brat, Demon Dean Winchester, Gen, Gore, Hell, Hell Fic, Hellhounds, M/M, Self Harm, Suicide Attempt, Teacher-Student Relationship, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 04:11:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, like the best pupils, is bright, attentive and frustrating. He's also creative.</p><p>Teaser: Dean collects hellhounds. He likes the hacked-up strays who drip ichor from the stumps of missing limbs and grind their teeth down to nubs by chewing chains and rock and burnt bone. They're pathetic to the last, with blood-slick fur and white-lipped wounds beneath. They cringe and cower. They love Dean, the only thing that has ever been kind to them; they'll take whippings and wriggle back to him with their chins on their paws because he called them "sweetheart" once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sic the Dogs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mondegreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mondegreen/gifts).



Dean collects hellhounds. Not the hale and healthy ones like the pack that dragged him down; not the gatekeepers who prowl, tails high, and drag escaping souls back in by the ankle. Not the border guards who snap at the ancient vermin who lurked here before it was Hell and want their homeland back. 

Dean likes the hacked-up strays who drip ichor from the stumps of missing limbs and grind their teeth down to nubs by chewing chains and rock and burnt bone. They're pathetic to the last, with blood-slick fur and white-lipped wounds beneath. They cringe and cower. They love Dean, the only thing that has ever been kind to them; they'll take whippings and wriggle back to him with their chins on their paws because he called them "sweetheart" once.

"I suppose you would know how that works," says Alastair. He crouches down to peer at the panting beast beneath the rack, prods it with hook-tipped rod he pulled out Dean's intestines with, back in the day. "You have experience in chasing scraps of affection, after all." 

The hound yelps.

"Don't hurt my dogs," snarls Dean, and jams a knife between Alastair's fourth and fifth rib. Alastair rears back, blurring white at the edges like a horse's mane. He hauls Dean around and shoves him onto the rack, and Dean's legs fall gracefully open on either side of his hips. 

"You should really watch that temper of yours," says Alastair. He pins Dean with one hand, crooked fingers splayed over his sternum, and reaches back with the other to explore the wound. "Good placement. You pierced the lung." Rasps and whooshes mark his voice for a moment, just to humor Dean. Nothing Dean can do will have any real effect on Alastair's body. He's just smoke. Smoke and words and a crackle beneath borrowed skin.

Dean will be like that one day: incorporeal and indestructible. He wriggles under Alastair's illusory hand and kicks his left foot, not intending to connect with anything, not intending to free himself, but because he can. He's not tied down. Dean's back on the rack but only in a literal sense, because it's furniture, because Alastair doesn't like to flung him to the floor (it's dirty.) 

Below the rack, the hellhound snuffles and scratches its neck with rust-gutted claws.

Later, when Alastair has finished hurting him (has finished hooding Dean like a falcon, has pried the jitters and the hesitations out of him, has reminded him of what quality torture can be and of how invested he is in Dean's success), he asks about the hounds again. Dean says they keep things clean. They snarf up scraps and lick blood from the blades that he holds out.

Alastair disapproves of this. He never lets hounds in the room when he's working, not even the vigorous and hateful ones. Their chewing is a noisy distraction, their presence a threat he cannot fine-tune, their stench and slobber an offense to his senses.

Dean isn't uptight about that kind of thing. Some days, he doesn't even strap down his victim. It's fun to let them ooze off the table and crawl for the corners. It's fun to stalk after them, sending a gimp-hound ahead to flush them out, to gnaw on them with rot-soft teeth and black gums.

It's fun to drive Alastair batty. "Technique, grasshopper!" he wails. "Control! Think of each session as a symphony, finely composed and modulated."

"I dunno, I've always preferred messy rock," says Dean.

Alastair grips him tight by the hair; he lays his mouth upon the shell of Dean's ear and sighs. "Sometimes I despair of you, Dean," he says.

"No, you don't," says Dean. He grins and doesn't mind much when Alastair snaps his hyoid. He tallies it as a petty victory. It's hard to rile the guy up, but Dean has a knack for it. He has a knack for a lot of things and he can't mess up too much, not with Alastair keeping him on a tight leash and prodding him gently in the direction he needs to go.

One day, Dean leans over the soul he's working on and asks, "You like dogs?" 

The soul flinches. She killed a dog with her father's car when she was sixteen. Dean can work with that. He's good with the guilty ones. He can talk them into convulsions, bringing up faults and failures until they're frothing at the mouth with their own self-hatred.

It didn't take thirty years to learn that bodies are just analogies; every vein is a train of thought with hurt sluicing through, every organ some formative memory, every bone an assumption than can bolster or shatter. Dean learned from the best. 

"Creative," Alastair says when he stops by. 

Dean smiles. He talked the bitch around and around until she took the knife and started carving a confession into her own skin.

"This isn't an attempt to get out of doing the dirty work yourself, is it?" asks Alastair. 

"Are you calling me lazy?" Dean shoots back.

"Merciful," says Alastair, like it's a bad word.

The soul shrieks. She's cut deeper than she ever did when she was alive and her tendons are exposed, translucent ropes flecked with blood, stretching taut from her forearm to the heel of her palm.

"Good job, sweetheart," Dean calls over. 

She sobs and falls to the floor. A hound rambles over and starts licking at the wrist, tongue curling between the tendons and bone. She weeps and curls her body around it; presses her face into its smoke-coated fur until her skin comes away smeared with black. 

"Your welp is providing succor," Alastair says, his lip curling up. "That is counterproductive, Dean."

"No, no, it's okay," says Dean. She is weeping and taking comfort and she's saying to herself that there is hope down here, there are bright spots, there are warm things to lean on (but that hope is sick and mangled, that bright spot blinds, the warm thing is a thing with teeth and claws that hunts, and it can bleed and die, so you see,) "It's really gonna fuck her up later," Dean says. 

Alastair swivels his head to look at Dean, eyes marble-white and tinged with something close to pride.


End file.
